Moderated Iron sun with Aether batteries...

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Please define a "current carrying plasma"

Michael Mozina said:
Please do not confuse the two factors in a "current carrying plasma".
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First asked 26 April 2010
Michael MozinaYou keep using the term "current carrying plasma".
Can you give a citation to the textbook(s) where this term is defined and used in solar physics?

If you just mean a plasma that is created by a current then why do you think the solar plasma is such a plasma.

If you mean a plasma that has a current flowing through it then where does this current come from and why is all of the plasma in the Sun have a current flowing through it?

The fact is that a plasma can never have a current flow though it except when that current is from external sources. That is because the plasma itself is quasi-neutral.
 
dasmiller said:
But if it doesn't represent the ionization of the photosphere, why-

oh, I give up.
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That's his argument by misdirection. Here's how he typically applies it: Troll some knowledgeable people into doing a bunch of work he's clearly not qualified to do himself, only to spit on them in the end by adding a couple more impossible assumptions to the mix and expecting them to start over. I've seen him use this technique to take people on rides for pages and pages, then literally ignore all their responses and jump to another topic as if it never happened.

It's a rework of the old stand-by, argument by shifting the burden of proof, but with the addition of kicking people in the teeth after they've invested a lot of time and effort into trying to help him. Like a good con man he'll toss in an occasional insincere thank-you or coy apology, but unlike a good con man, Michael's use of this method to milk a failed argument is pretty transparent. It's a dishonest and manipulative way to work an argument, and one of his most often employed. It might be second only to his preferred method, argument by looks-like-a-bunny.
 
W.D.Clinger said:
From which it follows that:
If Michael Mozina does not agree on the neon opacity numbers calculated by sol invictus, then Michael Mozina's presentation won't be worth a hill of beans.

Sounds about right to me.
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And he will not agree with sol's numbers because, well, see my explanation of the argument by misdirection above...
 
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Michael Mozina said:
I accept Ben's (and your) previous statements as true related to ionization process
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OK, good.

For purposes of calculating an opacity number, I suggest we "assume" (which we can debate later) that all the Ne ions in the opaque neon layer range from +4 through +6. Furthermore we will assume (again we can debate it later) that anything above Ne +6 occurs strictly in the coronal loop discharges, and any emissions from Ne +3 or less occurs in the non opaque chromosphere as the the neon ions rise through the neon layer into the chromosphere, emit some photons and cool off, and then return to the electrified neon layer again. Is that acceptable to you?
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Not really. First off, I'd still prefer we don't discuss the sun, so there's no need to mention the corona, chromosphere, or anything else like that. I want to think about some plasma I could study in a lab - so I want you to tell me its chemical composition, temperature, density, etc., and then I'll go ahead and calculate its opacity. OK?

Now, ignoring the sun-specific parts, you want your plasma to consist of 90% Ne, but will all the Ne +4 through +6. I don't think that's possible. If the Ne is in thermal equilibrium at some temperature, we can calculate - using the Saha equation Ben mentioned - the relative abundances of the different ions. It will never be the case that all the Ne is ionized, and at 6000K nearly all of it will be unionized.

It could be that the Ne is not at thermal equilibrium. In that case we can't use the Saha equation, but you'll have to specify what it is that prevents it from thermalizing. We can then proceed to check whether that's consistent (i.e. whether whatever it is you think keeps it from equilibrating actually would), and from there attempt to estimate the opacity. Bear in mind that it's very hard to keep things away from equilibrium for long - that's why the laws of thermodynamics are considered laws of physics and have such broad applicability. But go ahead and suggest something.

Please remember - I don't want to hear anything about the sun, I want you to specify what I need to do to the 90% Ne plasma in my lab to achieve the state you want.
 
Michael Mozina said:
No Ben, it's not. The neon layer is *already ionized* beyond the point that 171A is going to do anything. The constant "current flow" through the layer creates two temperatures, the ion temperatures and the electrons temperatures. The layer is already in at least a +4 energy state so what is 171A light going to do to it?
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Michael, the problem with that is that the energy required to quadruply ionize Ne is very high. So in your plasma you've got lots of free negatively charged electrons flying around, and lots of strongly positively charged ions that really want to pull in those free electrons and neutralize themselves. It's going to be very, very difficult to set up a situation where not only does that not happen for most of the Ne ions, but it happens for none at all (because as we saw, even a very small fraction of Ne, Ne+, or Ne++ is enough to make the plasma quite opaque to 171A radiation). Notice that, while my calculation doesn't apply to Ne+++ and higher, that doesn't mean such a plasma isn't opaque. We'll have to see, but only after we have a self-consistent scenario in which such a thing is even possible.

Frankly, the only way I can imagine doing it is in an electric field so strong that there simply aren't any free electrons around - they've been sucked away by the field. But my intuition - and I'm willing to go that way and do some calculations if you decide that's your model - is that the field required will be absurdly strong, and that the charged Ne plasma that gets left behind will explode under its own electrostatic repulsion with some incredible force.
 
Michael Mozina said:
Since I'm not a home at the moment, and the SERTS links seem to be offline, does anyone happened to have a copy of that data, (or any spectral breakdown of the sun) that shows the various neon ions and the intensity of light from the various ions?
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Since you are thinking about the SERTS database Micheal, do you have an answer to:
See Extreme ultraviolet spectrum of a solar active region from SERTS.
 
W.D.Clinger said:
From which it follows that:
If Michael Mozina does not agree on the neon opacity numbers calculated by sol invictus, then Michael Mozina's presentation won't be worth a hill of beans.

Sounds about right to me.
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I will be happy (thrilled) to abide by the numbers that sol comes up with *provided* that they are calculated based on the conditions I have outlined above.

FYI, it seems to me that we may (have to check other elements) stumbled upon another valid empirical "test" to verify and or falsify not one, but *BOTH* solar theories at once. According to this theory, if we were to image the sun in a wavelength that is tuned specifically to Ne +4 we should expect to see the whole photosphere "lit up" quite brightly across the whole surface and it would be only slighly brighter around the footprints of the loops where they come up through the photosphere. The standard solar model would tend to "predict" a pattern of emissions that looked like iron on wavelengths or x-ray images where the light follows only the loop. Hmmm. Interesting. I think we may have figured out two valid ways to go about falsifying various solar models.
 
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sol invictus said:
Michael, the problem with that is that the energy required to quadruply ionize Ne is very high.
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Most electric sun models have a lot of electrical energy to work with. Don't sweat it. The SERTS data shows a clear pattern of high energy Ne emissions and virtually no light whatsever from neutral Neon. The plasma has free electrons "flowing through it" from the surface toward the heliosphere just like in Birkeland's terrella experiments.
 
FYI sol, I have already conceded that Ne+6 may be related to coronal loop activity. It's not critical to the basic argument that the Ne+6 emissions come from the neon layer, although I would expect them to come from the top of the neon layer at the "footprints" with some "small" amount of activity inside the loop itself. I we could look at the sun in Ne+4, we could probably falsify and/or verify both models at once.
 
Michael Mozina said:
Most electric sun models have a lot of electrical energy to work with. Don't sweat it. The SERTS data shows a clear pattern of high energy Ne emissions and virtually no light whatsever from neutral Neon. The plasma has free electrons "flowing through it" from the surface toward the heliosphere just like in Birkeland's terrella experiments.
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Well, with many exceptions not the least of which is that there was no layer of plasma on the terrella in Birkeland's experiments. And if it were anywhere near 6000K it would have vaporized that little brass ball. Obviously your argument from ignorance here does not support for your claim.
 
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Michael Mozina said:
Most electric sun models have a lot of electrical energy to work with. Don't sweat it. The SERTS data shows a clear pattern of high energy Ne emissions and virtually no light whatsever from neutral Neon. The plasma has free electrons "flowing through it" from the surface toward the heliosphere just like in Birkeland's terrella experiments.
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What do you mean, "don't sweat it"? How can we proceed and calculate an opacity without a model, or at least a set of conditions under which this might occur?

The Ne plasma cannot all be ionized to Ne+4 or higher if it's in thermal equilibrium at 6000K. Those two conditions directly contradict each other - so if you insist on them, I can't help you. Any tools I have available to calculate opacity use the laws of physics, and those conditions violate the laws of physics, which makes the result of any such calculation meaningless.

And please remember - I am not discussing the sun with you right now, I am discussing plasma opacity in a situation we could create in a lab. You tell me what I need to do in my lab to create the type of plasma of interest, and I'll calculate its opacity for you.
 
sol invictus said:
What do you mean, "don't sweat it"? How can we proceed and calculate an opacity without a model, or at least a set of conditions under which this might occur?

The Ne plasma cannot all be ionized to Ne+4 or higher if it's in thermal equilibrium at 6000K. Those two conditions directly contradict each other - so if you insist on them, I can't help you. Any tools I have available to calculate opacity use the laws of physics, and those conditions violate the laws of physics, which makes the result of any such calculation meaningless.

And please remember - I am not discussing the sun with you right now, I am discussing plasma opacity in a situation we could create in a lab. You tell me what I need to do in my lab to create the type of plasma of interest, and I'll calculate its opacity for you.
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You'll have to explain why you think anything violates the laws of physics to me. Keep in mind that it is not uncommon in current carrying plasma for ion temperatures and electron temperatures to vary by a whole order of magnitude or more.
 
sol invictus said:
And please remember - I am not discussing the sun with you right now, I am discussing plasma opacity in a situation we could create in a lab. You tell me what I need to do in my lab to create the type of plasma of interest, and I'll calculate its opacity for you.
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You would need something almost identical to the model Birkeland built and fill the chamber with silicon, neon, and helium.
 
Michael Mozina said:
You'll have to explain why you think anything violates the laws of physics to me. Keep in mind that it is not uncommon in current carrying plasma for ion temperatures and electron temperatures to vary by a whole order of magnitude or more.
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There is an equation, called the Saha equation, that tells you the number densities of states (including ionization states) of particles, given the temperature, density, and energies of those states. The only thing it assume is thermal equilibrium. One thing it tells you is that nearly all the Ne in a 6000K plasma is unionized.

So either your plasma is not at 6000K, not in thermal equilibrium at all, has lots of Ne+0, or the laws of physics are wrong.

If it's the second, you'll have to tell me precisely how and why, because otherwise I can't calculate the opacity.
 
Michael Mozina said:
It's not at thermal equilibrium by the way, it's spewing photons galore to get rid of the excess energy.
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"Spewing photons" is perfectly consistent with thermal equilibrium. In fact it's predicted by it.

Again, if you want to go that route, you'll have to tell me precisely how and why the plasma isn't in equilibrium. If it's because of a current I need to know what voltage to apply, at what frequency, and over what distance (and possibly more information).
 
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